


Pandora's Curse

by janzodmb



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Immortality, M/M, Multi, motivation loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9619211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janzodmb/pseuds/janzodmb
Summary: Jean Kirschtein faced a choice many years ago. Say yes and save the world, everyone will live a good life, just not him. Say no and keep fighting, keep losing friends. So of course he says yes, anything.Take up hope and vow to fight the dark wherever you find it as long as it exists. Not too different from what he's already doing, but there's a catch. He can't die, ever. And the fight never ends.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been piecing this together for awhile now and i think i have enough to put in the first chapter or so.
> 
> We join the hero and his comrades in the abandoned town of Shiganshima. Barren of human life for 11 years, the city has crumbled and cracked.  
> They look for an old house, crushed on a fateful day several remembered painfully.  
> One man clutches an old bronze key to his chest, staring at red stains on the street like he knows their names.  
> A dark haired girl grips his cloak, trying not let her gaze wander.  
> Blue eyes stare ahead, unable to accept the past.
> 
> They've all seen death before, not one a stranger to loss. This is something else altogether. There is no adrenaline this time, no fear, no urgency. Death faces them, quiet and forgotten, familiar. It knows something is about to happen, is waiting for it. Only, it's not what anyone would expect.

A door long broken, a lock no longer needed, a useless key. The frustration boils beneath the skin, hitting me in waves from where he stands, bronze now burning his hand. He pockets it anyway, out of habit, or memory, I can't tell. The others move the rotted wood from the entrance.

It seems to exhale, a breathe of mystery finally unobstructed, eerie yet tinged with hope.

No one moves, waiting, wondering if something will happen. They won't do it, can't. It's too much. I push through, standing at the precipice, uncanny darkness before me. For them, I tell myself, and step down into another world. Or so I thought. The path down was halting, like the stuttering of a young blue eyed boy I knew long ago, struggling and scared, but knowing exactly where he's going. A room waited for me at the bottom, cold like the gaze of a girl I used to know. Pristine walls and organized shelves greeted me in silence, almost like a warning of what was to come. I should have listened. But the sound of movement, no longer determined and angry, but broken and tired, made my decision for me and I stepped fully into our goal.  
It was smaller than I expected. Boxes and files set precisely along the walls, in cabinets or on display like the tea sets of a man whose grimace I can't remember anymore. At the back of the room, separated from the rest in a way I couldn't place - like a sliver knife in a set of plastic-ware - was a chest. Long and elegant, it drew me towards it like the angry remarks of a friend I had long ago, with the knowledge I shouldn't but unable to stop my body from acting. It seemed to be cracked open, just for my arrival, waiting for me to open it. Lifting the lid, I found what I would learn was the key to their salvation.

That salvation wasn't for me though. As soon as my fingers brushed the engraved metal I was set on the path of a war worse than anything I had yet encountered. Perhaps I should say I became aware at that point of a path I had been on all along. One that would take me far away. With only the promise that they would be happy in return. That was the day I met Pandora, and the day she handed me hope.

\------

The first time I met her we stood in a field of stars. Her skin was the color of night, with eyes of lavender, like my mother kept. In her hand she held a sword, old and unwieldy, but untarnished by time or use. It reminded me of the fairy tales he used to tell me, of heroes and adventure. She said to me, like waves lapping against the shore, "Would you take up Hope? Will you right my wrongs so that they may live?"

There was only one answer I could give, for what else could I offer them for what they had given me, "Absolutely."

"Then take this blade and protect them." With that she handed me Hope, the same weapon I beheld underground in a velvet lined box. "Now we wait."

I couldn't help but to ask what for.

She smiled, a sad smile, "The world to be born."

Her vagueness itched at me like an itch you know is only there because you scratched it in the first place. "What does that mean? Who are you?"

The smile faded, overtaken by a frown, one that knew all the pain the world could take and had seen worse. "That is quite the long story, but we have plenty of time to tell it. My name is Pandora, and a long time ago, I opened a box."

\------

As we waited, adrift among a glistening darkness, Pandora told me her story. It was the tale of a young girl in a peaceful world. In that world no wrong happened and there was no pain. That is, until a curious girl found a box. It was such a small box, easily resting in one hand. And who, in such a world, would even hesitate opening a box like this one? This girl, who would be known for her mistake --and by few for her redemption-- cracked open the lid and ended the world.  
See, the thing is, by opening a container such as this, Pandora was taken back to that very first spark of existence in our universe. With one major difference, evil now existed. It bubbled up from the depths and rose like a fog over the world that no longer was, and never could be again, the one she knew. And her punishment, her curse, was to watch.

Watch the fires spread across a growing civilization.

Witness the death of entire races.

And to live through all of it.

But there was one thing that could change this outcome. As time went on, playing out in front of her, she realized something had been left in the box. When she found the box again, it was larger. Long and delicate as if holding something of great import. Etched into the surface, in a language only she knew, was one word. Hope.

Pandora found she could not open this box, but she knew that, one day, someone else would. She just had to wait until then, watching the horrors she unleashed devour the world.

And that person was me. Not a hero, just a man who is willing to sacrifice everything for his friends.


End file.
